What Avengers: Infinity War does with Thanos is hugely impressive, as the script and performance from Josh Brolin made sure that the Mad Titan lived up to all the hype that had surrounded him since he was first teased six years ago. However, the storyline created for the movie did cause some continuity issues when put together with the previous teases about Thanos seen in prior films.
Specifically, the post-credits scene of Avengers: Age of Ultron had the Mad Titan don his Infinity Gauntlet and decree that he was going to search for the Infinity Stones himself. The problem was that this was three years ago and, in Infinity War, Thor is shocked to learn that the villain got his Gauntlet from Nidavellir, the realm of the dwarves, which he left in ruins. Of course, that begs the question of how hadn’t the God of Thunder discovered what had happened yet?
ComicBook.com took the chance to ask co-director Joe Russo about this quandary and the filmmaker explained that he believes the post-credits scene from Ultron took place either on Nidavellir or shortly after Thanos got the glove from Peter Dinklage’s Eitri, the king of the dwarves. As for the Thor conundrum, Russo suggested that the Asgardians simply had fallen out of touch with the people of Eitri’s planet.
“I think that it would be connected to Eitri. I think that clearly he is the one who forged the gauntlet and Thanos had the gauntlet at that point in time. It’s been awhile since any of the Asgardians have interacted with Eitri and his people.”
We’d previously posited that Ultron’s post-credits scene was set long after the rest of the film, maybe just prior to the events of Avengers: Infinity War. However, Russo’s explanation works just as well. After all, Loki had been in charge of Asgard for the past few years as he was impersonating Odin. Meanwhile, Thor was off travelling the galaxy, so it’s certainly possible that he never heard about Nidavellir’s attack.
